Interviews

id Software's Tim Willits Talks Rage

The longtime id veteran reveals some new bits on Rage's gameplay and development.

At last year's QuakeCon, id Software gave us our first good look at its latest major title, Rage. Using the new id Tech 5 engine, the game was presented with a setting of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and gameplay that would be part first-person shooter and part vehicular combat. We haven't seen much since then, however, including this year's QuakeCon, where id showed off a new two-minute trailer but nothing more. So to dig a little deeper, we cornered id Software creative director Tim Willits, who offered some insight into the game's setting and backstory.

"The game takes place in the near future after a comet destroys most of the Earth," said Willits. "You play a character from the past who wakes up in this new future world. There was supposed to be a plan to have been enacted to restart society but that plan has gone astray. It's first your job to survive the world, to learn about the world, and then to work with the settlers and different factions to fix the problem."

With driving apparently playing such a large part of the game, we asked Willits for details on how it would work and what kind of feel the team was aiming for. "We wanted to make the driving a natural extension of your first-person avatar," said Willits. "When you're running around and you're inside completing a mission, and you're engaged in first-person action, when you leave that building or underground structure and jump into your vehicle, we want to make that as seamless as possible. So we've given the feel of the vehicle kind of a first-person feel. We made it a little more arcade-y, a little more action-focused, rather than a driving simulation."

"We know that hardcore first-person fans are not necessarily hardcore racing fans, but we feel that we've brought them together in a way that's a little bit different than what other games have done," Willits continued. "We really hope that people will accept that."

From the sounds of it, Rage's driving sequences will be on the open-ended side, giving players options as they go from one area to another. "You may receive a mission where you have to go off across the wasteland; how you get across the wasteland is really up to the player," said Willits. "You can engage in combat if you get chased by the bandits, or you can race past everybody. We really want to let players decide how they get across the wasteland and how they want to engage the enemies."

It also sounds like there will be a fair bit of customization available with the game's vehicles. "You keep (your vehicles) throughout the whole game," explained Willits. "Like your first-person avatar, we want your vehicles to also progress: You can get upgrades, you can mod them, you can get themes for them. We want people to have an attachment not only to their character, but to the vehicles."